With which, Shillerman fell silent. He licked his lips again and his mouth remained open, but nothing more came out. His face was scarlet now and damp, and sweat fell from under his forelock to his shirtfront and to the floor. He shifted his weight to the other foot and back again and stared glassily across the desk at Luther. Luther could see that the man’s entire body was trembling, head to toe. And Luther was glad.
The warden sat nodding for a long time. He continued to smile blandly. Now he would have to call the governor’s office, he thought. Clear this thing up. Issue a correction to the press: There had been no confession. There was not going to be any confession. Luther only wished to God there would be a confession, but there would not. Part of him knew that that was why he was so angry: because there would be no confession. Not from Beachum. Not ever. The waves of rage came off him still.
First thing tomorrow, he thought, he was going to get rid of this son-of-a-bitch. Sam Tandy or no, he was going to make sure that the Reverend Stanley B. Shillerman was kicked the hell out of here. He was going to make sure that he never worked at another correctional facility anywhere between the San Andreas Fault and Jupiter.
He nodded. He smiled his bland smile.
“That’ll be all for now, Reverend,” he said.
8
I drove home, the radio off, my mind empty. I was tired; sick of myself. But I was glad, all the same, that the race to save Frank Beachum’s life was over.
PART EIGHT
1
"Davy-Davy-Davy-Dave, Davy-Davy-Davy-Dave,” I sang to the tune of the “William Tell Overture.” “Davy-Davy-Davy-Dave. Dave. Y-Davy-Davy-Dave. Davy-Davy-Davy-Davy-Davy-Davy-Dave …” And so on, pretty much along the same lines. As I sang, I held my little boy up in front of me, held him by the waist, facing away, tilting him this way and that as I raced him through the living room, down the hall, once around our bedroom, out into the hall again and to his nursery, to his bed. He screamed and giggled as I gave him the ride.
“I am going to my bed!” he cried out happily.
And I hoisted him over the rail and dropped him on the soft mattress with a healthy bounce. Then I leaned in over him, pressing the mattress to make him bounce again and again. My heart was a stone, heavy as a stone.
“Sleep-city, me boy-o,” I said.
He grabbed my arm, squealing. I eased up, letting him settle. His laughter eased into a wordless murmur. He held on to me. He studied my forearm, smiling. He gripped it in his two little hands. He stroked the hair there thoughtfully. “Why are you here?” he said.
I grinned like an idiot. Dear Christ, I thought. Dear Christ. “Where else would I be, ya goon?” I said, forcing a laugh.
He considered that too, and then let my arm go. “I will go to sleep now,” he said. He rolled over and closed his eyes.
“Wise move,” I told him. I nearly choked on the words.
At the door, I stood a moment and watched him lying there. He turned his head on the mattress and peeked at me. The fact that I was still there made him smile.
“Go to sleep, ya monster,” I said.
I switched off the lights.
In the corridor outside, I paused again. Stone-hearted, black-gutted, heavy-headed, beat. I stood with my head bowed. I massaged my temples with my hand. What had I done? What had I wrought? I could see it all so clearly now.
It was scary stuff: to have been so deluded all day. Not to be deluded anymore. Scary; empty; scary stuff. To have the Beachum story gone, resolved into a dew. The mission of the hour vaporized, the heroic effort a bagatelle, the grail a mirage-and the job kaput. The job and the marriage sure to be kaput. And nothing left but the glowing memory of chasing around all day trying to prove that a rack of potato chips made a guilty man innocent at the hour of his death. Ah, the human mind: what a kidder.
I took a breath and headed down the hall.
My wife was sitting at the dining room table, an oval table. She had cleared the dinner dishes, Davy’s and hers, and was sitting at the oval’s head, sitting over an empty cup of coffee, rubbing the fingers of her left hand with her right.
I clumped to the table and sat down opposite her. I drummed my fingers on the wood. Badump-badump-badump. Sorry about the zoo? I thought. Sorry about the day? Sorry about our life together, such as it was? Badump-badump-badump went my fingertips on the oakwood. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Badump-badump-badump.
Barbara didn’t look at me. Her stately features were set and sad. She twisted her left hand back and forth on the fingers of her right. Slowly, that way, she worked her wedding ring over her knuckle and took it off.
She set the gold band on the tabletop-reached out to place it as far from her as she could, as close to me. Then she sat back. She raised the empty cup to her mouth so I wouldn’t see her lips trembling. Then she set it down unsteadily, making the saucer chatter.
She nodded at the ring. “If that were a bullet, you’d be dead,” she said. I believe it was the only spontaneous joke I ever heard her make.
I sat awhile, without a word, my eyes stinging. Watching the golden band go in and out of focus, watching the reflected light extend from it in rays and then subside. Is that all? I thought, my drumming fingers falling still. Is that what I was so afraid of all this livelong day? Merely losing her. Whom I didn’t love. And moving away from Davy, whom I rarely saw. Was that the whole impetus behind the Beachum fantasy? That long hallucinatory delaying tactic: had it all been in the service of avoiding merely this?
We both stared at the ring awhile, Barbara too. When I shifted my gaze to her, she was still staring at it. Her back straight, her head rearing, her features set in their haughtiest, most aristocratic expression. It was something she took very seriously, that ring, taking off that ring. But then, she took just about everything seriously. She always had.
“Right,” I said finally. My hand lay motionless on the edge of the table. “So I guess-what? — Bob called you?”
She snorted softly. “What’s the difference who called me?”
I shook my head.
“She called me, if you really want to know. Your Patricia.”
“Right,” I said. “Right, right, right.” Like Beachum’s confession, this made sense to me on the instant. It would be Patricia who called. She had wanted me to make her suffer, and now she was paying me back for doing what she asked. And I deserved it too, which was probably the strangest thing of all.